Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition

A dynamic, open-world TPP action game inspired by John Woo's films. Sleeping Dogs was created by United Front Games, and the player takes on the role of a police detective who tries to infiltrate the structures of a dangerous crime organization.

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition for PC, PS4 and XONE is a TPP open-world action game featuring a melee combat system, which is significantly more complex than in other games of this kind. Originally, the project was to deliver the third installment for the True Crime series (with the subtitle Hong Kong), but due to legal issues, it was necessary to change the name of the product. Sleeping Dogs was developed by United Front Games – a Canadian studio founded in 2007.

Plot & Mechanics

The player is taken to the Far East, and the game is set in Hong Kong. While creating the plot, the developer was heavily inspired by Asian action films made by John Woo, such as Hard Boiled. The player assumes the role of Wei Shen – a police detective who tries to infiltrate the structures of a dangerous crime organization known as Sun On Yee. In order to gain the trust of mobsters, Wei has to fulfill their orders, climbing the mob hierarchy. The path leads through a lot of smaller and larger assignments. While completing those, the player engages in melee combat, drives fast cars, jumps across rooftops, takes part in shootouts, etc.

The aforementioned elements constitute the main contents of the game. The protagonist quickly learns martial arts, as well as how to use different weapons and a lot of other destruction-causing techniques. The open world of the virtual Hong Kong is divided into a few diverse districts, such as the splendid Central HK or Aberdeen, where the poor live. Obviously, the game world offers a lot of side missions and challenges that make the experience more diverse.

The moral element to the work of an undercover cop (heavily inspired by Splinter Cell: Double Agent), is an important feature of the game. The player has to balance their actions in order not to become an evil figure, and neither to lose the trust of the protagonist's new employers.

Countless American and Asian action films inspired the creators, and this can be seen in the game's overstylized, expressive visuals. Sleeping Dogs does a good job of presenting the atmosphere of an eastern metropolis. The original version made quite a good visual impression, but this Definitive Edition introduces a lot of graphical improvements – above all, they encompass the characters' faces, particle effects and the draw distance; also, more environmental objects can be destroyed in this version. Certain changes were also brought to the mechanics, as for instance the difficulty level in challenges was rebalanced – previously, they were either too easy or too difficult.

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition for PC, PS4 and XONE includes all the 24 expansion packs, which came out earlier for the edition released on the seventh-generation systems. The two largest DLCs for Sleeping Dogs were included as well (Nightmare in North Point and The Year of the Snake).